Mission to the Volga excels as one man’s very personal account of his experiences. It has been mined for valuable nuggets of information about the politics, geography and ethnography of Central Asia in the early fourth/tenth century, and there’s a refreshing minimum of hearsay. But the best moments are whenever Ibn Faḍlān puts himself in the picture, telling us what it was like to be confronted by a cheeky and foul-mouthed beggar or to dine in an enormous tent, seated next to a Turkish warlord on a silk covered throne. He is a truly engaging eyewitness. His much-quoted description of the funeral rites of the Rūs on the banks of the Volga has a cinematic quality. It is vivid and unforgettable. You are there with him, watching as the heavily tattooed northmen perform the last rites for one of their chief men. The scene is utterly pagan for a devout Muslim, yet it is to Ibn Faḍlān’s credit that he is scrupulous in explaining that the Rūs consider cremation to be better than burial in the earth.
We have no idea what eventually happened to Ibn Faḍlān. Presumably he got home in one piece or we wouldn’t have his narrative to enjoy. But it is safe to say that he must have been very glad to be back in familiar, more comfortable surroundings … and he has left us with a classic of travel writing.
Tim Severin
West Cork, Ireland
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first read sections of Ibn Faḍlān’s book as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow, in the company of John N. Mattock, a guide well seasoned in the classical Arabic tradition. When I began teaching at the University of Oslo in 1992, it seemed only natural that I should guide my students through the description of their Viking forebears. I have read the text in the company of many students at Oslo and Cambridge over the years and learned much from their insights. I would like to thank them all. I can no longer recall what is mine and what is theirs. I guess that’s the camaraderie of the road. The same is true of the audiences at the many institutions where I have talked about Ibn Faḍlān and his journey over the years.
When I finished The Vagaries of the Qaṣīdah in 1997, I was keen to take a holiday from pre-Islamic poetry, and Ibn Faḍlān’s text seemed like just the site I was looking to visit. I did not intend my stay there to become permanent but, in odd ways, it has. Over the years I have written articles and encyclopedia entries, given papers and radio talks, and received many emails and phone calls from those who have also fallen under the spell of the text. I especially remember the Icelander who lost his patience with me when I tried to explain that Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead was a fantasy novel. Of course, I was hoist with my own petard some years later, when, in the days before library catalogues could be searched electronically, I tried in vain to locate a reference to an article in a journal. I had scribbled it on a piece of paper with no indication as to where I had come across it. After an hour among the catalogues and stacks I realized that the reference was spurious and that it had come from Crichton’s preface to the novel!
I have kept up my interest in Ibn Faḍlān as a hobby over the years. I have never found the time to learn Russian, so I knew that I was not the person to do justice to the text and its abundant scholarship. So, I have tried, with my edition and translation, to furnish a new generation of scholars with the basic equipment and the grid references they need to find their way through Ibn Faḍlān’s strange but enthralling world.
Many companions have helped me along the way. An old friend, Geert Jan van Gelder, reviewed my first draft a decade ago and, as is his wont, saved me on many occasions from having egg on my chin before I even left the house. A new friend, Shady Hekmat Nasser, advised on orthography. Thorir Jonson Hraundal, of Reykjavik University, helped with the Glossary and the Further Reading. I am delighted that Ibn Faḍlān has afforded us the opportunity to develop our friendship over the years. Maaike van Berkel gave me a copy of her excellent PhD thesis.
Most of the work on this volume has been done on flights between London and Abu Dhabi or New York, in the InterContinental Hotel Abu Dhabi, and in various restaurants, hotels, and bars in Greenwich Village and SoHo. I would like to thank the staff of the InterCon and the cabin crews of Etihad and Virgin Airways who looked after me so well. I can well imagine how envious but dismissive of these luxuries Ibn Faḍlān would be.
Over the years the village of Embsay in Yorkshire has been a welcome retreat where I can combine walking and writing. David and Julie Perrins are wonderful hosts. Nigel Chancellor and Christina Skott took Yvonne and me around the Gulf of Bothnia in their boat and introduced us to the magic of the Finnish sauna. We also managed to explore a Viking cemetery together, despite the depredations of man-eating Finnish insects.
My family has always given me everything I needed, whatever jaunt I was off on.
Philip Kennedy and I have been swapping traveler’s tales of our mishaps in the Arabic literary tradition for thirty years. In the company of our editor comrades, we are happily trying to redraw the map of Arabic literary creativity by means of the Library of Arabic Literature. My fellow editors on the board of Library of Arabic Literature are a constant reminder to me of how far I still have to travel in order to master Arabic and English.
And last but by no means least, I owe a special debt to my project editor Shawkat Toorawa. He and I have worked on this volume on and off whenever we happened to be together over eighteen months, and especially in Abu Dhabi in February 2014. There was a delightful incongruity about discussing the frozen wastelands of the Ustyurt beside the pool at the InterCon. And, as with all adventures, my memories of our collaboration will remain with me forever.
Despite such generous guidance and company, I am only too conscious of how often I have stumbled and slipped in my edition, translation and notes. Sometimes I just never learn.
INTRODUCTION
On Thursday, the twelfth of Safar, 309 [June 21, 921], a band of intrepid travelers left Baghdad, the City of Peace. Their destination was the confluence of the upper Volga and the Kama, the realm of the king of the Volga Bulghārs. They arrived at the court of the king on Sunday, the twelfth of Muharram, 310 [May 12, 922]. They had been on the road for 325 days and had covered a distance of about 3,000 miles (4,800 km). They must have managed to travel on average about ten miles a day.
The way there was far from easy. The province of Khurasan was in military turmoil. There were many local potentates, such as the Samanid governor of Khwārazm, who were often lukewarm in their support for the caliphate in Baghdad: our travelers had to secure their permission to continue. The Turkish tribes who lived on the Ustyurt plateau, on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, were mostly tolerant of Muslim merchants, but they were proudly independent and suspicious of outside interference. The Khazars, who controlled the delta where the Volga flowed into the Caspian, had always defied Muslim control. And there was the terrain and the weather: deserts, mountains, rivers, snows, and bitter cold.
Why would someone want to make such a journey in the early fourth/tenth century, from the luxurious splendor of caliphal Baghdad to a billet in a yurt among the Bulghārs, a semi-nomadic Turkic tribe?
Some months before the travelers left, a missive had reached the court of Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32). The king of the Volga Bulghārs had embraced Islam. He was asking to be accepted as one of the caliph’s loyal emirs—the caliph’s name would be proclaimed as part of Friday prayers in Bulghār territory. The king petitioned the caliph to send him instruction in law and in how he and his people were to correctly perform religious devotions as proper Muslims. He also asked that the caliph bestow enough funds on him to enable him to construct a fort and thus protect himself against his enemies.
The